Carly Rae
After downing a couple of pills (probably just Panadol) to banish the signature ‘why the deuce am I doing this’ butterflies, I emerged from my stakeout point at a nearby coffee shop and made my way to Metro. Already not-quite-fashionably late, I proceeded to stall in the car for a further five minutes, sitting low in case I was being watched and arguing with my friends about whether the boy or the girl should ideally arrive first to a date. We concluded that I’m not hot enough to keep anyone waiting for longer than I already had, so I hustled up the street and into the dark folds of Metro.Casually propped at far end of the bar was a lone ranger who I knew had to be my guy, but I awkwardly curtailed my approach and introduced myself to the bartender instead. Mostly to avoid prolonged staring—I’d definitely lucked out, people. Tall and fit with light eyes, (blue perhaps?) topped by a mop of curly hair and sparkling with enough boyish charm that all my misgivings had melted away before our menus were even in front of us.
The alcoholic in me scrambled for the wine list, mainly in order to secure a prop with which to occupy myself if eye contact proved too difficult. The gentleman was already nursing a Beck’s, which falls under my approved drinks list for males. So far, so good. It soon came out that neither one of us had much of an appetite, so we settled on a selection of appetizers—probably a good move, as in hindsight I’d hate to have been trying to wrangle slippery carbonara during the conversation that ensued.
The discourse was rather thorough—no stone was left unturned—we covered everything from hangovers and personal nomenclature to linguistics and complex moral dilemmas. At one point, some comedic relief came in the form of an imperative viewing of a recent body piercing that was mentioned. No, not mine… When the bar tab had been exhausted and the ambient volume switched from date to disco, we decided to take to the streets and walk off our heavy meal. Despite being too cold to properly form a sentence (is ‘northest’ a word?) I walked him most of the way home while probably rambling chaotically. I guess he finds good conversation to be as much of a turn-on as I do, because somewhere between exchanging numbers and saying sayonara there was a rather spontaneous and lovely goodnight kiss. Critic for the win—thanks y’all.
Bieber
Over the last few weeks I’ve been stepping out of my comfort zone. From getting a piercing up to some casual stripping, but to be honest I’d never done a blind date before. I was a little apprehensive about it at first until I was told that ‘she was hot’, ‘its pretty casual,’ ‘you get some nice food and a few beers.’ My idea of casual turned out to be a little different to that of my flat mates, as when I tried to leave the house in a t-shirt they forced me to change my entire outfit, shower and shave.So there I was, bang on time sitting at the bar in my flat mate’s clothes, hoping that this would read like the male version of 50 Shades of Grey. She was a little late, but after the bartender assured me that he had seen previous girls turn up 25 minutes late so I wasn’t too unhappy when she was only 10 minutes past the deadline. She was pretty easy on the eyes, so in retrospect, I was quite happy I had been pressured to put in a bit of an effort into my appearance. We seemed to get along pretty well right off the bat, with not a single silence through the date and the talking split pretty evenly 50/50. The beers were cold, the food was good, although my bright idea of eating dinner beforehand in order to make the most of the bar tab/dessert tab turned out to be a bit of a failure as I just managed to make myself look anorexic by not being able to eat anything.
Luckily this week turned out not to have a twist, or not that one i could figure out anyway, so there were no video cameras etc to intrude on our romantic evening. When she told me that she didn’t usually drink, immediately thought I’d landed myself a health freak until she asked if I would mind if we headed outside for a dart, which turned that on its head. My flat mates had been telling me that the critic date needed spicing up as it had been a bit tame recently, but unfortunately ‘nailing her in the bathroom’ and ‘showing her my penis for a pick up line’ did not happen and we finished it off with a stroll down George street and a pash. While this was happening though a few friends of mine walked past and caught us in the act. Numbers were exchanged and I’d say we will catch up again at some point. Cheers Critic for making Monday mornings and a Tuesday night a whole lot more interesting.